A trip to Grozny is an exercise in forgetting. This southern Russian city—the capital of the republic of Chechnya—was flattened in a government military offensive that began in late 1999. The aim was to return the breakaway, Muslim-majority region to Moscow’s control, and the block-by-block fight left no neighborhood untouched. U.N. monitors who arrived with humanitarian aid in late February 2000 described Grozny as a “devastated and still insecure wasteland,” where only about 21,000 civilians remained.
Today, Grozny is a thriving city of more than 283,000—and a flashy, Dubai-style showcase for Moscow’s ability to rebuild. Minutka Square, once the scene of a gruesome ambush, is now a big-box shopping center. The downtown, which had been leveled by artillery fire and Russian bombing, has been rebuilt with wide boulevards and a neon-lit center that features glass-and-steel skyscrapers and a glitzy high-rise hotel called Hotel Grozny City.
One man has presided over Grozny’s reconstruction: Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president and trusted local strongman of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Mr. Kadyrov remade Grozny and, in the process, created a cult of personality for himself. His image adorns billboards and posters in the city; a recent nightly news broadcast featured 21 straight minutes of footage of Mr. Kadyrov as he inspected security forces and held a meeting, plus a reading from his Instagram feed.
With the Russian military now poised to resume airstrikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo, Grozny also remains international shorthand for Russia’s destructive firepower and willingness to use scorched-earth tactics. As Secretary of State John Kerry said on Oct. 16, “There are still deep beliefs in a lot of people that Russia is simply pursuing a Grozny solution in Aleppo and is not prepared to truly engage in any way.”
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